Interviews reveal new details of Martin Luther King’s affair with Kentucky senator.
In newly released recordings, a longtime Kentucky state senator reveals new details about her affair with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and what happened in the hours before his assassination.
Gerald Smith, a University of Kentucky history professor who helped edit King’s papers, interviewed Georgia Davis Powers for seven hours over three days in August 2010 under the condition that the material be sealed until after her death.
Powers died Jan. 30, 2016 at age 92. The University of Kentucky Libraries’ Louis B. Nunn Center for Oral History recently posted the recorded interviews online. Listen at: kentuckyoralhistory.org.
Powers was the first black person elected to the Kentucky Senate, and the first elected woman who wasn’t succeeding a husband. During 21 years in the General Assembly, she pushed through more than 40 bills, mostly to strengthen rights for minorities, women, children, disabled people and labor.
Months after she retired in 1989, a book by Ralph David Abernathy, King’s top lieutenant, made public that Powers and King had been lovers. Powers told her version of the story in a 1995 autobiography, “I Shared the Dream: The Pride, Passion and Politics of the First Black Woman Senator From Kentucky.”
In a small, second book, “Dr. King’s Last Day,” published in 2015, Powers elaborated on what she, King and the rest of his inner circle did in the hours before he was gunned down 50 years ago this week in Memphis. He had gone there to help striking sanitation workers.
There are no startling revelations in the interviews, but Smith said they provide a more candid and detailed account of Powers’ relationship with King, her feelings about their affair and his impact on her life and career.
“One takeaway for me with those interviews, and she doesn't write about it in either one of the books, is just the level of guilt that she experienced,” Smith said.
